Page 22 - Francis Cotes - A winning end-game
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Very cleverly, Cotes won royal permission feeling put out of joint by Cotes’s smiling royal
to exhibit a pastel version of his large double reception.
portrait of Queen Charlotte with Princess
Charlotte at the Society of Artists in 1767. Cotes was keenly involved in the drive to gain
George III and the Queen came to the greater respect and visibility for British artists,
exhibition themselves to see this grand, yet in contrast to favoured Continental painters. In
touching portrait of the queen with her baby, 1765 he had been among the group who
hung in pride of place. It was the first time the petitioned George III for a royal charter for the
royal couple had ever granted permission for a Society of Artists, and when this was granted
portrait to be exhibited, and the first time they Cotes was named as one of the Directors. Then
had visited any of the Society’s shows, a in August 1768, after a falling out between rival
triumph for Cotes, celebrated in ve rse in the groups, Cotes and fifteen other directors resigned
London Chronicle that May: from the Society. In great secrecy, he joined
with Sir William Chambers, Benjamin West
How happy Cotes? Thy skill shall shine, and George Michael Moser to make detailed
Unrivall’d in the class, almost divine; plans for a new body, the Royal Academy of
For royal Charlotte’s finished form is thine! Arts. Cotes presented the proposal to the king,
How on thy canvas, Cotes, with joy is seen who approved it on 10 December 1768, laying
The tend’rest Mother, and the mildest Queen… down his own clear conditions. Reynolds was
…Now Cotes have done! Now close thy talks president of the new Academy, and Cotes
of fame himself was elected on to the council. In the first
In George’s sunshine, and in Charlotte’s name.2 two exhibitions of 1769 and 1770 he would
show eighteen portraits.
The coup was doubtless doubly pleasing to
Frank, as his friends called him, since Reynolds lll
exhibitedno portraits at all that year, perhaps
The Welby portrait, bold, vital and
2. London Chronicle, 5-7 May 1767, quoted in E.M.Johnson, expressive, was one of seven that Cotes
Francis Cotes (1976), ppp 41-2. For Cotes’s life, see also Martin exhibited in the Academy’s inaugural exhibition
Postle ‘Francis Cotes’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography in 1769. Painted in anticipation of this eye-
(2004); Neil Jeffares, Dictionary of Pastellists before 1800 (2006) catching show, with its bold contrasts of blue and
white, pink and green, it shone amongst the
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